The California Arrow was powered by a Curtiss engine.
Knowing Of the Wright Brothers' success with airplanes, Curtiss wrote to the see if they might have an interest in buying one Of his engines. He also met them in August, but the fiercely independent Wrights still had no interest in making a purchase. Although Curtiss failed to win over the Wrights, at this time another inventor succeeded in making aviation history. For a few years, the Brazilian-born balloonist Albert been experimenting in France with heavier-than-air flight. After testing eventually built and flew an airplane called the Quatorze-Bis, which was designs like a large box kite. For a November flight of over 700 feet, he won the Deutsch - Archdeacon Prize for the first public, heavier-than-air, powered flight in Europe
back in the United States, the next year, 1907. Was a busy busy time for Curtiss. In January example. he rode the world's first V-8 motorcycle to a SFr-ed of 136 miles per hour in Ormond Beach, Florida. Having driven the cycle faster thx even typical of day. he became known as —the fastest mm earth In June. flew over Hammondsport in a Thomas Baldwin dirigiblc power by a Curtiss engine. This was the very first time that Curtiss went aloft in any sort Of aircraft. After alighting from the craft, he was now so interested in human flight that he soon started pluming how to make dirigible fly faster.